RIVER LONDON VIEW

Veteran British actress Brenda Blethyn is the quintessential middle-aged Englishwoman in the role of Elisabeth Sommers, pleasant-faced, matronly, working on her farm in Guernsey. Sotigui Kouyate (he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival), the dignified, elderly Malian actor who has worked with Peter Brook for over twenty years, is Ousmane, an African working in France. One a middle-class Christian, the other a poor Muslim. Both hear of the attack and head for London, Elisabeth in search of her daughter, Ousmane of his son. Their paths cross through a stench of fear and uncertainty.

Elisabeth’s first shock is to see her daughter’s lodgings: a tiny flat above an ordinary store run by an Arab in a crumbling Muslim neighbourhood. But the Arab landlord — to her surprise — is helpful, letting her in with a spare key. Elisabeth now begins the rounds of police stations, hospitals, morgues….French-speaking Ousmane holes up in a cheap hotel, looking lost. When they meet, the Englishwoman is struck by a civilisational blow.

Ousmane is so ‘different’! Could he be a con man? Could he know something about her daughter? Gradually, her daughter Jane’s story unfolds: she has been living with Ousmane’s son, even attending Koran classes in a mosque. “Why should she learn Arabic?” cries a devastated Elisabeth as her small world falls to pieces. “Who speaks Arabic?”

There is a moment of relief when the two learn that their children had planned a holiday in Europe and are perhaps safe after all. They laugh, even hug, Elisabeth invites Ousmane to Jane’s flat, they share a meal, he sleeps on the sofa. The ice is broken.

But the children are gone. Ousmane must return to France and Elisabeth to Guernsey. Both have changed irrevocably. Elisabeth, unwilling initially to even acknowledge Islam and Muslims, has sunk her head into Ousmane’s chest, allowed the winds of another culture to flow into her heart.